Most Popular

The missile attack on Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, and the decision by the Federal Aviation Administration to temporarily bar U.S. flights to Tel Aviv because of rocket fire, have riveted attention once again on the question of global aviation security. For aircraft cruising at high altitude, downing a plane requires either a relatively sophisticated missile or another aircraft, capabilities that up to now have been restricted to nation states (or their proxies). But recent developments in the global security situation, including the growing availability of less sophisticated technologies, suggest the rise of more broadly based threats to aviation in a number of regions around the world.

Deliberate threats to aviation come in three categories. There is the risk of attack on airport infrastructure or aircraft on the ground. We saw this occur in the 2007 terrorist attack on the airport in Glasgow, Scotland; the 2013 shooting at Los Angeles airport; the June attack by extremists on the airport in Karachi, Pakistan, and most recently rocket strikes occurring near Tel Aviv’s main airport, causing the Federal Aviation Administration to suspend U.S. flights into Israel.

More familiar is the threat of harm to aircraft in flight from a source inside the aircraft itself. This includes the placement of a bomb or a hijacking. Much of the global security architecture established after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks—measures to identify dangerous individuals through intelligence analysis and the screening of baggage or persons in order to detect dangerous devices—is aimed at preventing this kind of assault from within.

READ MORE

Less often discussed, but equally serious due to the increasing lack of control over portable surface to air missiles in weakly governed territories around the world, is the threat of downing a plane in flight at low altitude. While destroying an aircraft at high cruising altitude—as in the Ukraine—requires sophisticated technology, planes at low altitude either during takeoff or landing can be damaged more easily. Relatively simple surface-to-air shoulder fired missiles (or MANPADS) have the capability to harm aircraft at short range. In 2002, al Qaeda operatives tried to do exactly that when they unsuccessfully targeted an Israeli passenger plane taking off from Mombasa, Kenya’s second largest city.

These risks are not new, but security developments in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia indicate that our current security measures will need to adapt to new variations on those risks. Disorder and governance failures are spreading in some parts of the world. Terrorists have more access than ever to more sophisticated weapons, and are recruiting and training Western volunteers whose passports allow them relative freedom of movement around the globe.

The most worrisome region is—no surprise here—the greater Middle East. Since the Arab uprisings of 2011, security has markedly deteriorated in nations such as Libya, Syria and Iraq. The Tripoli government has scant control over its country, and even the capital city’s airport is the scene of a raging, bloody battle between rival militias. Syria and Iraq are now engaged in full-blown internal armed conflicts. Would you fly into Baghdad or Damascus right now?

Michael Chertoff wassecretary of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2009. He is now executive chairman of the Chertoff Group, a global security and risk-management advisory firm that advises clients, including airlines and others within the aviation sector, on how to manage their risk and protect against a broad array of threats and crises.